The Irish Warrior

By Kris Kennedy

As his men are slaughtered around him, legendary Irish warrior Finian O'Melaghlin is held captive by the despised English Lord Rardove. Struggling to break free, Finian finds aid from an unlikely source: the beautiful Senna de Valery, who is also trying to escape Rardove's bloodthirsty grasp. Risking both their lives, Senna releases Finian from his shackles so they can both flee, but their plight has just begun. . .


Seeking safe refuge, Finian and Senna have only each other to depend on for survival. Neither can deny their immediate attraction, but indulging their desires will put them both in grave danger. Finian vows to protect the woman who saved his life, but he soon learns she is a pawn in a much larger battle. For Senna has an unbreakable link to a priceless treasure many centuries old. It is the stuff from which dreams are made and for which men will kill--and not even Finian may be strong enough to save her. . .


Praise for Kris Kennedy and The Irish Warrior


"Medieval romance fans rejoice--Kris Kennedy captures the essence of old Ireland in this engaging, sexy adventure! The rich and imaginative story pulled me in from the start, and an irresistible hero kept me riveted till the end." --Veronica Wolff, author of Lord of the Highlands


"Sexy and adventurous, intriguing and tender. . .a page-turner full of high drama and hot, steamy romance!" --Jill Barnett, New York Times
bestselling author

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zebra Books
• Release date: Jun 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781420119213

Kris Kennedy

Wife, mom, psychotherapist and romance author, Kris Kennedy loves connecting with people. And she firmly believes every woman deserves a good book to help 'take her away.' She also believes that, if she ignores dirt, it will eventually go away. Originally from Philadelphia, she now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, preschooler son, and their dog, with another stray kitty to come soon, we're sure of it.

Book preview

Notes

Chapter 1

Early autumn, Northern Ireland, 1295 A.D.

It’s simple, really, drawled the voice from the shadows. Submit, or men start dying. The choice is yours.

Finian O’Melaghlin, Irish noble, warrior, and chief councilor to the great O’Fáil king, finished his grim smile. Everything was going as planned. Or rather, as expected.

From the moment The O’Fáil sent Finian to accept Lord Rardove’s long-standing but ultimately treacherous invitation to meet, Finian had been separated from his men, plied first with food, then with prison. Rardove was proving predictable. And dangerous.

Finian had argued against the meeting, but his king insisted. The Irish suspected Rardove was up to something. Something dangerous. Something related to the legendary Wishmé dyes.

Unfortunately, Rardove suspected the Irish were up to something as well.

Pain shuddered through Finian’s body from the savage beatings he’d already suffered, but that meant nothing. All that mattered was finding out what Rardove knew and preventing him from finding out any more. For that, he and his men had committed to die if needed.

Somehow, Rardove—he angled a glance over his shoulder—I don’t feel I can trust ye.

The guards holding his arms eyed him warily. Shackled around the wrists, cast in a prison with a blade at his throat and a guard on both arms, he was scaring them half to death. He could see it in their anxious eyes, smell it in the stench of fear rising from their pores. He growled once, to warn them and amuse himself.

Iron chains bit into his wrists as one of the soldiers twisted his arm up and into his spine. Lord Rardove, baron of a small but strategically important fief on the Irish marches, stepped out of the shadows and made a slow circuit around the entangled foursome.

Stop scaring my men, O’Melaghlin, he said, and deposited a disgusted glance on a soldier who’d backed up a pace at the feral growl. Join with me and you’ll be a rich man.

Finian laughed hoarsely. Rich, is it? I’d have something different in mind than to be fettered in chains and thrown in a prison.

Rardove gave an exaggerated sigh. You did not begin in chains, did you? We began in my chambers, with wine and meat. Now look at us.

Finian glanced around the small cell, where the stone walls wept rancid water from abovestairs and old blood from previous guests. I agree. We’ve deteriorated.

A wan smile crossed the baron’s face. You will find me a most accommodating master.

Master? Finian spit the word from his mouth. Tall, ruddy-faced, blond, Rardove was the English ideal of noble handsomeness. Finian wanted to kick his teeth in.

A hundred marks to you personally if you secure The O’Fáil’s goodwill in this matter.

Rardove, he said wearily, ye’ve been here for twenty years, and the land is dying under ye. The crops don’t yield, your people die of ague, your cattle from murrain. Yer overlord can’t stand ye, and neither can I. Why on God’s good earth would I align with ye?

The careful mask of calm covering the baron’s visage cracked slightly. Your king sent you here to parley, did he not?

‘Get inside the bulwark of Rardove Castle,’ was actually what his king sent him here to do. Step one, accomplished.

Parley? Finian retorted. Is that what ye call this?

I call this a necessary measure.

My question is simple, Rardove, and has not changed since I knocked on yer door: what would ye get out of such an alliance?

Step two: Ascertain what Rardove knew, how much he knew. And above all, stop him from learning any more.

The baron waved his hand through the air, a vague gesture. Reduced threat of war on my borderlands. An end to an old feud. His voice slowed. Perhaps, say, access to some of your Irish documents.

And with that, Finian had his answer: Rardove knew everything.

It was what he’d feared all along. Why would one of the most powerful lords in northern Ireland—powerful enough to seize these lands without his king’s permission twenty years ago, then powerful enough to acquire the typically unforgiving Edward’s royal dispensation afterward—now be begging for an alliance with the very people he’d conquered?

Ye know about the dyes, Finian said slowly.

The mollusks, the Wishmés, had been forgotten for centuries, but their legends stretched back to the Romans. In a time when majesty was instilled primarily on the point of a sword, the indigo shade was allowed only for royalty, but it could make a man with the recipe richer than a king. Much richer. And more powerful. Disguise and rumor were half the game, and there was no disguise so rich, so stunning, so fueled by some inner blue-black fire, than the Wishmé indigo of the Western Edge. Ireland.

Rardove’s lips stretched into an insincere grin. I haven’t the faintest notion what you’re talking about.

Bastard.

The Wishmé dyes were truly the stuff of legend. Stunning. Rare.

Deadly.

Slowly, like climbing down a rope, Finian slid down the cords of his anger, fighting the almost overwhelming urge to smash Rardove’s face with his boot. Then slit his throat.

Does yer King Edward know? he asked tightly.

Rardove smiled. At the moment, you ought to worry more about me.

"Och, don’t worry, cruim—inside, I’m shaking like a lamb," Finian retorted absently, his mind turning. The recklessness that would prompt Rardove to imprison an Irish nobleman on a mission of parley bespoke grave desperation. Urgency. Which wasn’t surprising, because the Wishmés were generous with their perils.

As a color, they made a true dye that could drop a king to his knees. But that wasn’t enough to make a lone English lord on the Irish marches goad his enemies with such abandon.

Weapons were. And the Wishmés could be made into a powder that would blow the roof off Dublin Abbey.

The question was, did Rardove know?

Pretty, aren’t they? Finian said, testing. No use in subterfuge any longer.

I do appreciate their hue, Rardove agreed, his tone musing. But more, I like the way they explode.

Jesus wept.

Finian nodded coldly. And yet, here I am. Ye might have the Wishmés, but ye don’t know how to make the dye. Ye need the recipe. And someone who can read it.

Rardove smiled and spread his hands. And thus, why should we not draw together, the Irish and I?

Possibly because the Irish had lost the Wishmé recipe hundreds of years ago. Were, in fact, on a desperate hunt for the dye manual at this very moment. But Finian saw no pressing need to inform Rardove of that.

You don’t like the terms? the baron inquired.

Let’s say I don’t like ye.

Tsk, tsk. Rardove shook his head. You’ve to learn manners, O’Melaghlin, like all your kind. He snapped his fingers at the guards. A smelly hand reached up and grabbed a lock of Finian’s hair, wrenching his head backward.

The sound of groans drifted in through chinks in the stone walls. Finian tried to turn but couldn’t. It didn’t matter. He knew who it was: O’Toole, one of his best men, whose leg had been broken in the attack.

Every member of his personal retinue knew this might turn out to be a death duty. Finian insisted each man choose it; no orders accompanied this mission except his own. But while his men may have been willing to sacrifice their lives for the good of Eire, Finian wasn’t quite ready to give them up yet.

And if I agreed? he said quietly. Perhaps he could feign surrender, leave with his men.

Why, you’d be free to go.

And then?

Every day you don’t return with an agreement from your king, I’ll kill one of your men.

Barely able to see from the torturous angle, Finian freed his head with a savage jerk. He fixed the baron in a murderous glare, pausing barely a second to wonder on the wisdom of a God who would give a man so evil the face of a saint. My men would come with me.

The baron shook his head in mock sadness. You must agree I’d be a fool to release all of you, giving me no recompense were the terms of our agreement not upheld.

I would agree ye’re a fool.

Another thin, unwell smile lifted the baron’s lips. I think perhaps two a day, he mused, peering at his fingernails. One in the dawn and one before bed. Like prayers.

I’ll sign the treaty, he said coldly. Release my men.

Release them? I think not. We sign papers, get witnesses, turn over the dye manual, all that messiness, before they leave.

Finian turned back to the wall in grim silence.

Rardove sighed. Well, I didn’t expect much wit from an Irishman. He turned to the guards. Chain him to the wall and lay a few lashes against his back. We’ll see if he thinks differently then.

They dragged him forward and shackled his hands in manacles dangling from huge metal braces bolted into the wall. A shield of dark hair fell forward as he dropped his head between his shoulders and braced his palms against the dank putrefaction, muscles contracted in readiness. He managed a brief prayer for survival, then one for vengeance, before the assault came.

It descended in screaming strips of leather, tearing open his flesh. Clamping down on his jaw, he scorned the agony, thinking only of what would happen to the spirits of his men if they heard him howling at Rardove’s feet. Battered back, stomach, ribs; he’d been beaten into a bloody mess twice already. Once more couldn’t matter much.

The assault was cut short on a shout from one of the baron’s men, who came slipping down the moss-covered steps to the prisons.

Good, my lord, panted the breathless courier. Word has come. Senna de Valery arrives.

Ah, my…betrothed. A pause. Unshackle him.

Finian spared a brief prayer of thanks to the woman who had saved him from this beating.

How long until she arrives? he heard the baron ask. The guards began unlocking the heavy iron cuffs from his wrists.

Soon, my lord.

And?

The simple but sinister question made Finian curl his lip in disgust. The soldiers jerked him around. A woman in Rardove’s care? She wouldn’t last a month.

You will be disappointed in neither her face nor her form, my lord, the messenger said.

Yes, I’d heard she’s a pretty thing, if not so young. Twenty and five, if I recall.

The soldier flicked a glance at Finian, then looked away. She has a great number of heavy ledgers with her, should that matter.

Rardove laughed. It will not matter overly much, no. She will be…otherwise engaged.

She will be like a lamb to slaughter, thought Finian.

The baron turned back. We’ll have to continue our negotiations later, O’Melaghlin.

Finian shrugged. We’ve more to say?

I do not. You do. There is a great deal for you to reconsider. I will enjoy watching it.

I’ll reconsider the terms of my mercy if ye release my men.

One graying, aristocratic brow inched up. Mercy?

Finian’s slow grin stretched from ear to ear. I can make yer death a quick one or slow, Rardove. The choice is yers.

The guards launched forward and flung him face-first to the ground. The weight of a heeled boot against his spine kept him pinioned as Rardove stepped over his legs and sighed.

Would that these beatings worked, he said in a plaintive voice, for I do appreciate their simplicity. But there you have it: they do not. One wonders whether it is due to the stubbornness or the stupidity of your people. Ireland is a strange land.

Finian shifted slightly, trying to ease away from the rock gouging into his thigh. The guard’s heel pressed down harder, and he stilled.

Rardove’s voice drifted in from his right. And Senna de Valery knows nothing of it, coming as she does from England.

Finian spared another brief thought for the woman. To the slaughter.

Scuffed leather boots paced an inch in front of his face then stopped, folding into thick leather wrinkles as the baron crouched beside him.

I shall have to devise an educational welcome for her, don’t you agree, Lord Finian? Perhaps a few Irish rebels dangling from the end of a rope? He put his mouth close by Finian’s ear. I’ll save you for the last.

Rage surged through him, red-hot and dangerous. He shoved his hips off the ground. The guard whose foot had been planted on his spine went somersaulting into the air. Finian swung around and kicked out with a boot, catching Rardove around his ankles. He went down hard. Finian leapt on top.

Four soldiers hauled him off and sent him flying through the air. He smashed into the wall, the back of his head hitting first. A knee in his stomach guaranteed he wouldn’t rise again anytime soon, and one to his groin made him never want to anyhow.

The soldiers dragged him back to his feet. He stood, fighting the swaying tug of unconsciousness, his boots planted wide. Summoning what ebbing strength he could, he lifted his head and shook away the blood dripping into his eyes.

Christ, Rardove snarled, his breath coming hard. You’re all savages. He jerked his head to the soldiers. Make him pay for his insolence.

They did, and later, as the light from torches carried by the retreating guards faded to nothing, Finian lay spread-eagled on the floor of his cell, barely breathing. But he was thinking hard.

The Englishry were a plague, an infestation of stark naughts, Rardove being the best example of their descent into hell. Finian would not ally with them were he offered the lordship of Tír na nÓg in return. He hadn’t wanted to come and even feign parley, but The O’Fáil wanted it done, and Finian could not refuse.

But now, even a feigned agreement with the worm would do nothing to save his men, only himself. Which was unacceptable. They would all leave, or none.

But either way, Rardove had best look to his back, for the Irish tribes were going to come down from the hills and besiege his castle from Lent until Yuletide. Then Finian himself would burn it to the ground, if he had to drag his bones out of the grave to do so.

Chapter 2

This shouldn’t take long, Senna de Valery murmured as she passed under the gates of Rardove Keep as the sun went down. It was four days after her ship had dropped anchor in Dublin and left her to her fate.

It had been a slow, long ride and Senna held her silence for most of its length, listening to the sounds of her new world: the host of riders accompanying her, creaking saddles, muffled voices, wind sighing over the Irish earth. Most of her time, though, was spent calculating how much money this business alliance would provide, if it came to fruition.

It was fresh hope, and that was practically priceless.

Forty sheep followed somewhere behind, the first installment of her bleating business proposition. Atop their sharp little hooves, her sheep carried the softest, most absorbent wool west of the Levant, a strain Senna had been perfecting for ten years, ever since she took over operations of the business from her father.

Wool was highly lucrative business. The fate of a dozen lesser crafts and a few minor princedoms rested on its commerce. Entire fairs in France were dedicated to the trade, sending coveted wool from England through the rich southern markets, straight to Jerusalem and beyond.

Senna wanted to nudge her way in to this market. If the wool being moved through the trade halls now fomented merchants’ enthusiasm, Senna’s strain would make them salivate. It was more absorbent, more silklike, more lightweight than any other wool out there, and required little mordanting to make dyes take.

She knew she had something special with her stinky, furry little sheep. She was simply running out of coin.

Rardove could give it to her. He had money that could save the business, the one Senna had spent the last ten years building up, while her father recklessly, relentlessly, inexhaustibly, gambled it away.

She stared hard ahead, trying to pierce the evening mists, eager for her first glance of Rardove Keep. Such purposeful peering had the added benefit of distracting her from the stench rising from her escort of burly, damp, leather-clad riders.

Are the mists always so thick? she asked the closest rider, pinching her nostrils as she moved closer to hear his reply.

He grunted and snorted back a sneeze. Or perhaps he said, Most there’s ’bout. Either reply was equally illuminating.

Senna lifted her eyebrows and said Ahh, in a bright, cheerful voice, then reined a few paces upwind.

She could feel the eyes of the burliest soldier boring into her back. Balffe was his name, the captain of Rardove’s guard. A block-chested warrior with a face like old sin, he hadn’t taken his eyes off her for two days. And it wasn’t leering, either; it was more like loathing, which was ridiculous, because she’d done nothing to him.

Yet. She passed him an evil glare over her shoulder. He glared back.

Never mind the soldiers. She turned forward. Lord Rardove was the only one who mattered. It was of no account that she’d heard he was lordly in his manner or fair as an angel in his face, because she wasn’t in the market for a husband. She was in the market for a market.

As they drew near Rardove Castle, wraithlike villages began revealing themselves through the fog, first as pale splotches through the mist, then as dark splotches upon the earth. Small, huddling huts and waterlogged fields bespoke poverty, as did the thin villagers who stared sullenly as they passed.

She began immediately estimating the number of villagers per wattle-and-daub hut, calculating how much fatter and richer they would be if her scheme was successful. They might even become prosperous. She wished she had her abacus to hand. It was so much easier to tally numbers with the device.

It was so much easier to tally numbers than to calculate the goodness of building an alliance with a man who thought it wise to starve the people who fed him.

The horses’ legs moved through low-lying evening mists as they passed under the portcullis into the outer bailey. The air was cool. Sunset flamed in fiery red sweeps across the horizon. Through the glaring haze, all she could discern was the single spike of the castle’s tower and the offal dripping down the keep walls from the privy chutes.

As they passed under the gate, shouts rose from one of the dilapidated huts, followed by the sound of fists hitting flesh.

Well. First impressions can be deceiving, she reminded herself, nose pinched firmly in her veil, and she was determined to have this be successful. Get the contracts, build the flock, and she would be able to sustain herself. Never to rely on anyone else’s inabilities again.

A vision of my lord’s justice, my lady, announced the knight at her side.

She pulled her mind from its reverie and glanced up to behold a gallows. It took a moment to comprehend what she was seeing: a dog dangling from the end of a rope.

Her mouth dropped open. "My lord wreaks justice on dogs?" she whispered in horror, and crossed herself.

The soldier looked at her in confusion. Lord Rardove stands yonder. He pointed to a broad-shouldered, blond-haired giant of a knight who stood gleaming in the setting golden light.

Wrenching her horrified gaze away, Senna looked to the condemned man standing beside him. His head was up, his face expressionless, next in line for the noose. She stared into his eyes and knew, with utter certainty, he was innocent of any crime.

Turning back to her prospective business partner’s glittering eyes, Senna saw he knew it, too.

Her hand shot into the air. She pushed herself up in her stirrups, about to call out. The soldier at her side smacked her arm back down.

Do not, he snapped, interrupt.

A shiver of coldness unfurled inside her body, a thin banner of fear. She lifted her chin as they clopped dully across the cobbles and under the gate to the crumbling inner bailey. She barely noticed being helped out of the saddle and propelled toward the mossy round tower.

Rardove Keep, my lady, said the knight as he escorted her up the covered stairwell.

Yes, I see, she murmured as he ushered her over the threshold into a small antechamber. A maid hurried up. It was dim inside, damp and echoing. Cold. A long, shadowed corridor stretched away into the distance. There might be anything at the end. Kitchens. More stairs. A dragon.

Swallowing thickly, Senna fumbled with the brooch fastening her cloak.

Welcome to Rardove Keep, my lady.

She jerked her head back up at the sound of the voice.

I am John Pentony, Lord Rardove’s seneschal.

Shoving back the hood of her cape, she peered through the dim light to find the speaker. Tall, thin, and gaunt, he was a ghostly, balding figure with almost lidless eyes, moving toward her.

She tried to step forward, but her feet were rooted to the ground, her tongue to the roof of her mouth. He pierced her with an unreadable gaze, then a smile creaked over his face, like a hinge unused to the movement. The maid blinked, her fingers frozen in a nervous twist before her waist. The jagged smile stayed on the seneschal’s face and for half a minute they all stood, staring in silence.

Then his cold eyes marked a slow slice downward to the maid. She half curtsied and slipped between him and the doorframe. I’ll see to your rooms, mistress, she whispered.

The steward’s eyes were washed of emotion as he turned back. We are pleased you have arrived.

Yes, I—I thank you. She flicked her gaze around the now empty hall. We?

The steward paused. Your arrival was earlier than expected.

Oh, well, not so early as to miss… She faltered. To miss what I saw at the gallows.

Empty, ashen eyes appraised her, level and flintlike. They were Irish rebels, my lady.

The dog? she queried sharply, against her much better judgment. The dog was an Irish rebel? He looked more Welsh to me.

One almost invisible eyebrow arched up, forming a ladder of small, upside-down crescent moon shapes across the steward’s high, smooth forehead. Then he looked over her shoulder and nodded at someone or something in the shadows behind her.

A huge mastiff, Senna imagined glumly, growling and slathering, waiting for the newest arrival to step wrongly and be thrown to him for dinner. That shouldn’t take long.

A stone stairway disappeared into the gloomy distance behind Pentony’s angular figure. Through the gray miasma of smoke and stale air hovering in the hall, the maid was returning, her slim shoulders pushing through the fog. In truth, the castle was a blurry echo of energy, reverberating in dim, cold pulses.

She shook off a shiver and turned back. Where will I be meeting with Lord Rardove? she asked briskly. I have the account books here. She indicated a small chest by her feet, which the soldier had carried in.

Lord Rardove asked that you be shown directly to the mollusk fields.

She drew back. "To the what?" She’d heard exactly what he said.

The mollusk fields. The beaches.

I know nothing about mollusks. Or their beaches. Which wasn’t precisely true. Or true at all.

He regarded her somberly. They’re where the mollusks live.

Why ought I visit them?

Her high-pitched, startled responses finally gave the wraith-steward pause. We were under the impression you knew something of dyeing, my lady.

She clutched her fingers to her collar. Another opening closed off. I am here to discuss a joint venture in wool. I know nothing of dyeing, she assured him, in what she hoped were firm tones. Convincing tones.

And yet, your mother—

I am nothing like my mother, she said sharply. I know nothing of dyers or dye making. My, she was telling a lot of lies of a sudden.

Pentony’s figure, already freed from excess movement, stilled further. I will inform my lord of that.

Please do, Senna replied in her haughtiest tone, perfected in dozens—nay, hundreds—of meetings with merchants and shippers and abbots of fair-towns. In general, it was intended to subdue anyone thinking bargaining with a woman meant easy terms. In this case, it hid belly-chilling fear.

Although why made no sense. She’d made no mention of being a dyer. Heaven forbid. Hard to believe anyone even knew that remote history.

It had nothing whatsoever to do with her. This was a business arrangement about wool. It had nothing to do with smelly little shellfish that, if crushed and mixed just so, by a true craftswoman, could create the most astonishing, wondrous shade of indigo—

Nothing whatsoever to do with her.

Tell Mary—Pentony’s gaze indicated the trembling maidservant—or myself of any needs you have.

With another slight bow, he turned to leave.

And Lord Rardove…? she couldn’t help asking, hating the quiver in her voice.

Angular ashen eyes glanced back to her, containing the expected chill. It was the faint glimmer of a genuine smile that surprised her.

You will no doubt be joyful to hear he is to return soon.

The enigmatic Pentony left, cricking his neck to pass under the low archway, and Senna let the maid hurry her out a far door. She barely paid attention, instead enjoying a few moments of pointless rumination about Rardove’s apparent proclivities for torture and very thin attendants, and what that might mean for her.

And the unsettling knowledge that someone thought she knew something of dye making.

They reached a small building.

She had her life’s mission, and it was not about getting her skin discolored. It was not about coming in after days spent in a dye hut, sniffing out the trail of some new concoction that would create green the shade of ice, or a new red the hue of hot blood, with hair wild, huge smiles, and hugs and—

Nothing whatsoever to do with her. That was her mother’s mad passion. Not hers. Senna had no passions. She had a business.

The dye hut, my lady, the maid said, and swung a door open.

Senna came out of her reverie with a start. Oh, no. I am not—I cannot—

She froze and looked around her, peering at the trappings of a nightmare.

Chapter 3

The room was large and essentially empty but for one long wooden board laid across three trestles, creating a table like that in a great hall. Only this one didn’t have trenchers and saltcellars on it. It had vessels and pots filled with bugs and mosses and drying seaweed.

Tall, narrow urns were scattered around the room beside squat, tublike clay containers, filled with dried flower blossoms and mosses—lichens picked gently off trees, their long spindly fingers stretching up over the lip of the urns. Roots. Tiny bugs, died and dried. Crushed shells. Light gray iron salts and brick red madder. Scales and sieves, and mortars for grinding. Only these did not grind flour. They were for making dyes.

Senna backed away, her hand at her throat. The room smelled like an old summer memory, rustling-soft and comforting. Potent, like garlic cooked too long at the bottom of an iron pot. Memories of Mama at her work, crafting dyes, but always a soft smile for Senna whenever she crept in to sit beside her. Mama’s hair, braid coming loose and trailing down her back like a red stream, her cool hand on Senna’s small, hot head.

Senna’s breath came short and clipped, little choppy waves overtop an ocean of awfulness.

Her hand went unconsciously to the small, loose pages tucked into a pouch at her side. The only thing left of her mother’s, this packet of letters. Senna had given up trying to recall her mother—given up wanting to—twenty years earlier, at the moment she’d understood what had happened: she’d been abandoned.

It beggared the imagination, then, the cost of understanding why these penned notes and sketches of her mother’s were the only things she’d brought with her. And the abacus, of course. That held no surprises.

It struck Senna now that perhaps she ought not to have sent her small, armed escort back to England. But it might take weeks, a month, to complete the arrangements with Rardove, and she paid by the day for such men. She’d not even brought a maid; but then, that was because she didn’t have one. Not anymore.

Even so, what good could her small escort have done? How many soldiers had she seen patrolling the walls? Far too many to resist whatever Rardove might wish to do.

Do not be foolish, she chastised herself. Foolish to think Rardove would endanger this highly lucrative business venture. The trunk of gold and silver coins she’d espied under the trestle table was not so valuable as the deal she was offering him: wool.

Still, such logic did little to allay the anxiety crawling through her belly. She started gnawing on her fingernails, her mind engaged in terrified pirouettes.

Mistress Senna?

She spun to the door, teeth at her thumbnail.

Lord Rardove has returned. He wishes to see you in the hall.

Her hand fell limply to her side.

Muted revelry drifted up to the small bedchamber Senna had been shown to. A small, thinly cushioned bed mattress hung by straps of leather from the aging bedposts, for support. Two armless chairs, a table and a fireplace bespoke comfort, but in reality it was a small, unkempt room smelling faintly of rot.

This would not be her room for long, so it hardly mattered. She took a deep breath and ran her hand over her tunic. It was dark green with a mist green overtunic, designed to fit her upper body snugly. Ten years old, it had been worn for every contract signing she’d done in that time, and was starting to show the strain. The elbows were worn and the stitching at the waist and wrists badly frayed. Embroidery of pale hues bound the worst offenders, but still, it was old. Plain. Perfect.

A wave of raucous laughter came rolling up the stairs. Bawdy curses rode within like flotsam. Are they always so…jubilant?

The maid met her eyes. Always, miss.

The maid stitched the thin sleeves tight, then pinned her hair up, creating a soft but complicated pile atop her head. She draped a veil of the palest green over the concoction and corded it with a slender silver circlet, and they stared together at Senna’s dull reflection in a small, polished metal handheld mirror.

You look as fine as a queen, avowed the maid, then added, a bit less firmly, if you are a bit pale.

I am as wan as an undyed tablecloth, Senna agreed sourly.

No matter her looks. This was about business. And that is what she did best.

She picked up the most recent ledger of accounts, cradled it in her arm like a babe, and swept down to the great hall, ignoring the way her breath came speeding out in unsteady little gusts. She had a great deal of experience keeping such panic at bay. She would do so now as well. Everything was manageable, given time.

She lifted her chin, crossed the threshold of the riotous hall, and froze like ice.

The room was smoky and crowded. A burst of laughter exploded from one of the crowded tables. A barely clad woman tumbled off a soldier’s lap and the drunken group roared again. Arcs of mead curled into the air as their tankards crashed down on the rough-hewn tabletops. One of the coarse, leather-clad barbarians spit something wet and copious into the rushes, then leaned down to haul the woman up by her elbow.

Senna sucked in a breath. Numbers. Think of numbers. The